My claims about it has been about unassisted engine chess (blitz from 5 0 to 12 2 time control) and assisted chess at correspondence time controls (+1 year per game), based mainly in positions where Stockfish prefers white but it's black that has the advantage, and the critical positions contain material imbalances that engines don't seem to play well from the white side. An opening book with these lines will score better from the black side of the Italian against itself and will outperform old books unprepared (I can give dates, it seems the relevant lines were found/uncorked in Febrary 2019 and were polished up to May 2019 - since then the Italian has become rare and black scores better when it is tried - again, because of unprepared opponents with old books.)

However, we're discussing apples and oranges as Larry Kaufman is talking about the Italian in OTB human games where engines are forbidden, in such cases he's probably right, and it's possible the engine-engine lines useful in corr chess have no use in practice of human games (black needs engine-like tactical awareness to succeed.) I still expect that a black win on the Italian will be played in an important human game, and to win one at corr chess, but black's advantage in it is so small I won't hold my breath.

I hope no typos. Italian Opening is a very balanced opening IMHO and it is (it should be) a draw with perfect play / correct preparation, just like many other regular and well studied openings. It gives a good game to both sides.

Last but not least, a MultiPV = 7 search up to depth 26 with SF 10 (2 cores, non deterministic) returns a white advantage of 25 cp, which is similar to the white advantage on the opening position.

My claims about it has been about unassisted engine chess (blitz from 5 0 to 12 2 time control) and assisted chess at correspondence time controls (+1 year per game), based mainly in positions where Stockfish prefers white but it's black that has the advantage, and the critical positions contain material imbalances that engines don't seem to play well from the white side. An opening book with these lines will score better from the black side of the Italian against itself and will outperform old books unprepared (I can give dates, it seems the relevant lines were found/uncorked in Febrary 2019 and were polished up to May 2019 - since then the Italian has become rare and black scores better when it is tried - again, because of unprepared opponents with old books.)

However, we're discussing apples and oranges as Larry Kaufman is talking about the Italian in OTB human games where engines are forbidden, in such cases he's probably right, and it's possible the engine-engine lines useful in corr chess have no use in practice of human games (black needs engine-like tactical awareness to succeed.) I still expect that a black win on the Italian will be played in an important human game, and to win one at corr chess, but black's advantage in it is so small I won't hold my breath.

I understand now that you do not claim that the italien is better for black but only that black can get an advantage against old books.

It is clearly a different claim and it is not clear that engines can get a position when they show advantage for black against kaufman's new repertoire.

Here is how I treat the drawish Italian Opening. For blitz chess I sometimes play the Hungarian Defense 3...Be7. This gets white out of the book and ends any ideas that white can play Ng5 as an attack. It can take time off the opponents clock as he tries to find the continuation.

For computer chess, I have also added the Hungarian Defense. Recently in an ICS match, Arasan-Schooner played to under a 20 move draw by repetition after 3...Bc5. Not once, but twice in a row! To get around this 3...Be7 has been added to my polyglot book. This offers better possibilities for a decisive result.

I understand now that you do not claim that the italien is better for black but only that black can get an advantage against old books.

But new books with those lines score better against themselves from the black side, what is the explanation for that?

It could be argued that all my claims are null, since I'm mostly talking about Stockfish (and related branches)'s games, so it wouldn't be that the Italian is better for black in general, only if white is Stockfish. But I've been able to win with the Italian from the black side against much faster hardware and against Leela in a decent GPU, that was enough to convince me (mainly because I was never able to win against such opponents from the white side, sometimes they just ran over me, so something is going on there).

It is clearly a different claim and it is not clear that engines can get a position when they show advantage for black against kaufman's new repertoire.

The question is, was Larry aware of these black lines before building his new repertoire? Because it's clear these lines are mostly secret, held by privileged individuals, and I only know about them because I was extremely lucky that they were shared to me. I'm even afraid to talk about the resulting positions because people are smart enough to use retrograde analysis to figure out the moves from the Italian required to reach those positions.

I get the impression that either Larry didn't know about them, or he looked at them and concluded they had no value in human chess (because they're lines designed for computers to beat other computers), but only he can answer such questions.

Note the Italian isn't alone in this category. What is the best move in this position in the Sicilian?

1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 d6 3. d4 cxd4 4. Nxd4 Nf6 5. Nc3 a6

Well, it turns out the best move is 6.h3!! It's so good it almost kills the Sicilian (you're better playing 1...e5 just to avoid this), but it probably kills the Najdorf (so what happened?... that in computer chess the Sicilian became very rare!), but this is only because engines from the black side have a bigger problem dealing with it than with the other moves, wouldn't expect someone building a repertoire for 6.h3 and recommending it being played in human games, because the critical lines were also designed for computers to beat other computers.

I repeat that it's discussing apples and oranges and that these things are only useful against engines, but if you're going to play an engine it'll beat you anyway so playing the Italian as black or 6.h3 as white isn't really going to improve your chances.

I understand now that you do not claim that the italien is better for black but only that black can get an advantage against old books.

But new books with those lines score better against themselves from the black side, what is the explanation for that?

It could be argued that all my claims are null, since I'm mostly talking about Stockfish (and related branches)'s games, so it wouldn't be that the Italian is better for black in general, only if white is Stockfish. But I've been able to win with the Italian from the black side against much faster hardware and against Leela in a decent GPU, that was enough to convince me (mainly because I was never able to win against such opponents from the white side, sometimes they just ran over me, so something is going on there).

It is clearly a different claim and it is not clear that engines can get a position when they show advantage for black against kaufman's new repertoire.

The question is, was Larry aware of these black lines before building his new repertoire? Because it's clear these lines are mostly secret, held by privileged individuals, and I only know about them because I was extremely lucky that they were shared to me. I'm even afraid to talk about the resulting positions because people are smart enough to use retrograde analysis to figure out the moves from the Italian required to reach those positions.

I get the impression that either Larry didn't know about them, or he looked at them and concluded they had no value in human chess (because they're lines designed for computers to beat other computers), but only he can answer such questions.

Note the Italian isn't alone in this category. What is the best move in this position in the Sicilian?

1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 d6 3. d4 cxd4 4. Nxd4 Nf6 5. Nc3 a6

Well, it turns out the best move is 6.h3!! It's so good it almost kills the Sicilian (you're better playing 1...e5 just to avoid this), but it probably kills the Najdorf (so what happened?... that in computer chess the Sicilian became very rare!), but this is only because engines from the black side have a bigger problem dealing with it than with the other moves, wouldn't expect someone building a repertoire for 6.h3 and recommending it being played in human games, because the critical lines were also designed for computers to beat other computers.

I repeat that it's discussing apples and oranges and that these things are only useful against engines, but if you're going to play an engine it'll beat you anyway so playing the Italian as black or 6.h3 as white isn't really going to improve your chances.

I do not believe that a move is good only against engines.
Top humans can play many games against engines from the position after 6.h3 when they are black and simply memorize the lines that the engines beat them in order to use the same lines that the engines beat them against other humans.

There are 2 options:
1)They win the game thanks to a prepared line.
2)The opponent play something different when they get a good position that they do not memorize how to continue.

I think that even in the last case they can generalize from their experience against engines and play correctly moves that they know to be good in similiar situations.

I think that even in the last case they can generalize from their experience against engines and play correctly moves that they know to be good in similiar situations.

Engines and humans play so completely different chess that even if you get a variation where you perform relatively well against engines they might be useless against humans.

I tried this back in Rebel Decade times, because I could beat the engine at Depth 6. So what I did was using the same openings and moves I was using to defeat Rebel Depth 6 against humans. The result was that I performed worse against humans than with my usual repertoire, because humans played nothing like Rebel, and they wouldn't play the blunders that were allowing me to beat Rebel, so it was useless.

If white does not give chance all black will get is equality, Don;t except White plays like a noob against black. If Ruy Lopez stands out then Italian will so as both have same themes.

It is weird that this comes from you Master Om, because in 2011 you were holding that the Italian was a superior defense for black than the Spanish. Back then I held the Spanish was the best defense, so we started a series of matches where I'd try to beat your Italian and you'd try to beat my Spanish.

Apparently we never played the Italian part of the match but you used to be on the other side of these discussions, where it'd be more likely for white to "give chance" to black in the Italian than in the Spanish, where my best lines could never beat the opponents that I beat with the Italian.